The bells rang out the close of High Mass; choir boys chanted the Deo gratias.

As in its early days, when in the last years of the twelfth century it was erected on the summit of the Isle of Sallertaine, the little church, now yellow with age and growth of lichen and wild-flower, witnessed the crowd of worshippers, dressed in the same fashions as then, pour out from the same doors in the same order and collect in the same groups in the same Place.

The first to be seen were the farm-labourers and farmers' sons, who came out by the east door from the transept where they had heard mass, and who, passing round the choir, grouped themselves on the other side, where the young girls would presently emerge. Two by two they appeared between the pillars of the west porch with eyes lowered to the tips of their sabots. They were well aware that their rosy cheeks, smoothly braided hair beneath the pyramid of muslin, the embroidered stockings peeping under the short petticoat, the manner in which they walked with hands demurely crossed over the moirÉ aprons, made them the cynosure of all eyes. This retired bearing only lasted for some twenty paces; soon the girls had formed themselves into a group close by the Michelonnes' house, at a short distance from that of the younger men. And now in their turn they waited. Eyes grey, blue, brown, very much on the alert; eyes sparkling with life; eyes in which lived a remembrance. Laughing lips, telling of the mere joy of living; the chirping as of a flock of birds greeting one another. Following them came the farmers and their wives; widows, distinguishable by the band of velvet in front of their coifs; older men, men of position; these all issuing from the nave, among them many a grave face still under the influence of devotion, in which like walking saints they seemed wholly absorbed. Many tall, finely set up men there were, with calm, fresh complexioned faces closely shaven, save for a thin line of whisker. All wore the same costume of black cloth coat with straight collar, trousers with flaps, raised on the ankle by a fold in the cloth, blue or green belt extending half way up the waistcoat, round felt hat bound with velvet. They joined the younger men, swelling the groups that shouldered each other, forming by this time a dark swaying mass reaching to the last buttress of the choir. The matrons, on the contrary, making a passage for themselves through the crowd, went their way, looking in their plaited skirts like ornamental round towers. From their calm eyes, and the brief smile with which they exchanged greetings with a town acquaintance, it was plain to see that, having outgrown the follies and illusions of youth, each had settled down to her store of domestic happiness, joy, or sorrow that a green patch in the Marais had reserved for her. They talked with other farmers' wives, were joined by one or other for the homeward way, and thus accompanied, dignified and worthy, they directed their steps towards the plain, or to the various boating stages.

Despite their departure, the gathering in the Place grew denser and denser. It was the place of Sunday meeting where for centuries past the dwellers of the marshes, prisoners of the canal-bound land, had been wont to assemble. To them attendance at mass was alike a religious duty and an occasion of social gathering. Before wending their way back to their farms, not a man, even the gravest and most considered among them, would have failed to pass an hour in a wine shop chatting with his friends over a bottle of muscadet and a game of cards, luette particularly, a game imported from Spain in ancient times. Already innkeepers were standing at their doors at the foot of the Place, sounds of merriment and laughter were to be heard from within, and the stock-phrases of luette players, "Your turn." "My turn." "I play a horse." "I take merienne."

Meanwhile there was more than ordinary animation among the girls stationed behind the groups of men. They were scanning all the church doors, whence were now issuing good women, tellers of rosaries, who had lingered long over their devotions.

"He is coming out," exclaimed tall AimÉe Massonneau, the daughter of farmer Glorieux, of Terre-Aymont. "Did you see him, that poor Mathurin Lumineau? He insisted upon coming to mass. I am sure he might have got dispensation!"

"Yes," returned the little auburn-haired daughter of Malabrit, "it is six years since he came to Sallertaine."

"Six years—really?"

"Yes, I remember. It was the year my sister was married."

"And why do you think he came?" asked Victoire Guerineau, of La PinÇonniÈre, a sharp-tongued pretty girl, with a complexion like a wild rose. "For he must have shown some spirit to manage it."

"To stand by his father," said a voice; "the old man had been so saddened by the going of ElÉonore and FranÇois."

"To show himself with his brother AndrÉ," put in another. "He's a good-looking fellow is AndrÉ Lumineau! I should not mind——" Victoire Guerineau and the others broke into a peal of laughter.

"You are quite out of it. It's for FÉlicitÉ Gauvrit he came!"

"Oh, oh!" exclaimed those in front.

"How ill-natured you are! If she were to hear you."

And several turned towards the Michelonnes' doorstep, near to which, amid a little throng, stood Mathurin's former fiancÉe.

Suddenly a murmur ran through the crowd.

"There he is. Poor fellow! How difficult it is for him to walk."

And under the pointed arch of a low doorway, one half of which only was open, a deformed figure was seen struggling to force a passage through the narrow aperture, one hand holding a crutch clutched hold of a pillar outside, by which the poor man strove to drag himself through, but he had only succeeded in freeing one shoulder. With head thrown back, there was an expression of agony upon the face which attested the violence of the effort, and the strength of will that would not give in. Mathurin Lumineau seemed on the point of suffocation; he looked at no one in the throng of people whose gaze was riveted upon him; his eyes on a higher level than those of the spectators were fixed upon the blue vault of heaven with an expression of anguish that re-acted upon them.

Conversation was interrupted; voices began to murmur: "Oh, help him! He is suffocating!"

Some of the men made a movement to go to his assistance; at that moment, from the gloom of the interior, his father asked:

"Shall I help you out, Mathurin? You cannot squeeze through there. Let me help you."

In a low voice, inaudible to those without, but with terrible energy, Mathurin answered:

"Don't touch me. Confound it! Don't touch me. I will get out by myself."

At length the man forced his huge bust through the door, and with a tremendous effort steadied himself, stroked his tawny beard and settled his hat on his head. Then with the aid of his crutches, standing as upright as he could, Mathurin looked straight before him, and advanced towards the group of men, which opened out silently at his approach. No one ventured to address him, it was so long since he had been among them, the old habit of familiarity seemed lost; but the attention of all was concentrated upon their former comrade, and no one noticed that his old father with AndrÉ and Marie-Rose were following close behind him.

The cripple had soon reached the spot where the girls were standing. They fell apart even more quickly than the men had done, for they guessed his intention; a lane opened between them reaching up to the houses. At the far end of this living avenue, clad in black dresses and white coifs, standing erect, quite alone, was seen FÉlicitÉ Gauvrit. She was the one he sought. She knew it; she had foreseen her triumph. No sooner had she observed Mathurin Lumineau sitting on the family bench in church, then she had said to herself: "He has come for me. I will hide away by the Michelonnes' house, and he will follow me." For she was gratified to have it seen that he still loved her, the girl to whom, handsome though she was, no suitors came. The women with whom she had been talking had prudently moved away; she stood alone, under the Michelonnes' window, looking like a lay figure from some museum in her costume of heavy stiff material, the braids of her lustrous brown hair shining under the small coif, her dazzlingly white complexion and uncovered throat. Erect, with arms pendant on either side of the moirÉ apron, she watched her former lover coming towards her between the double row of inquisitive lookers-on. The many faces bent upon the girl in nowise intimidated her. Perhaps in the suit and cravat Mathurin was wearing she recognised the very ones he had worn at the time of the accident; any way, she remained calm and unabashed, her face even wore a slight smile. He drew nearer, leaning on his crutches, his eyes fixed, not on the path, but on FÉlicitÉ Gauvrit. What the poor fellow wanted was to see her once again; to make her understand that health was returning, that hope was awakening out of his misery, that the heart of Mathurin Lumineau had never wavered. All this his sad eyes told her as he drew near, offering in piteous pleading the bodily and mental suffering he had endured to her who had been their cause. But his strength was unequal to the effort, he grew deadly white; and when the insolent beauty, the first to speak, said calmly before all the throng:

"Good day, Mathurin," he could not answer. To have seen the smile on those rosy lips, to be so near to her, and to hear her address him in the same easy tones as if they had but parted the day before, was more than he could bear.

He grew faint, leant heavily on his crutches, and slightly turned his tawny head to Driot, who was behind him, as if to say: "Take me away," and the younger brother understanding the appeal, passed the suffering man's arm under his and led him away, saying as he did so, to divert the attention of the crowd:

"Good day to yourself, FÉlicitÉ. It is an age since I have seen you. You are not a bit altered."

"Nor are you," she retorted.

A few laughed; but among those assembled there were many who were deeply touched, even disposed to tears. Some of the girls of Sallertaine pitied the poor fellow so exhausted and confused, led away on his brother's arm; they sorrowed that he could never enjoy that love which each, in the recesses of her heart, hoped some day to share with the yet unknown swain. One of them murmured: "It is not only in body that he is afflicted, his mind, too, seems gone, poor fellow!"

Many women, mothers going home with their children, walked more sedately as they saw the group on the way to Chalons: old farmer Toussaint, AndrÉ and Mathurin, with Marie-Rose bringing up the rear. They recalled with a shudder what a magnificent youth the poor cripple once had been, and thought: Heaven send that no such calamity befall our boys when they grow up!

FÉlicitÉ Gauvrit began to be affected in her turn, but in a different manner. The departure of the Lumineaus had turned attention away from her. Some of the men surrounded the district crier, who was calling out the list of lost articles and farms to be let; others repaired to the inns. The girls collected in little companies to seek the homeward way. Every minute five or six white coifs were to be seen bowing and bending in farewell salute, separating from the others, and going off to the right hand or the left. FÉlicitÉ, left alone for some minutes, joined one of the groups going west of Sallertaine, towards the high Marais; she was received with some embarrassment, as one whom they did not want to fall out with, yet who was somewhat compromising, and whose company their mothers did not desire for them.

Young men drinking together in the inns called after her the slighting remarks men make on girls for whom they have little respect. She did not answer them back, but with her companions descended the hilly road bordered with houses, and thence on to the open Marais in the direction of Perrier.

At that time of the year, before autumn rains had set in, many of the farms could be reached on foot without the aid of boats. A raised path, rough and ill-kept, flanked by dykes on either side, led across the meadows; grey-green grass covered the level plain until the uniform tint dissolved in brownish hue in the distant horizon. Horses grazing, stretched out their necks, and looked at the little group clad in black and white, breaking the continuity of grey-green plain. Ducks, at the sound of their footsteps, ran in among the rushes that trembled on the edge. From time to time a shelving embankment branched off the path, and one of the girls, separating from the group, would make her way by it to some distant house, only marked by the customary cluster of poplar-trees; and FÉlicitÉ Gauvrit, roused for a moment from her abstraction, would say "Good-bye," and then walk on silently as before.

Soon she was left alone on the path that stretches to the sea. Then slackening her pace, she gave herself up without restraint to her thoughts. She was not happy at home. At sixty-five her father had married again a woman of thirty of loose character, whom he had met at Barre-de-Mont, and to whom in virtue of her youth he had made over the most realisable part of his property. The young stepmother was not kind to FÉlicitÉ. One reproached the other with extravagance and ruining the home. The eldest brother, in the Customs at Sables d'Olonne, a gambler and hard drinker, was perpetually threatening the old man with a summons for falsified accounts, and by thus intimidating him drained still further the diminished capital of the Gauvrits. The old family, once so respected in the Marais, was rapidly declining, and this FÉlicitÉ knew too well. The young men of Sallertaine and the neighbouring parishes came readily enough to dances at La SeuliÈre; they danced, drank, joked with her, but not one of them offered to marry her. The impending ruin, the family divisions, kept suitors away.

Yet another reason, more real, and one that appealed more strongly to sentiment than any other, held back the sons of farmers, and even farm-labourers from asking the hand of FÉlicitÉ Gauvrit in marriage; and this was the tie, binding only in honour, the debt of fidelity, rendered even more sacred by misfortune, which public opinion obstinately maintained as still existing between La SeuliÈre and La FromentiÈre. In everybody's opinion FÉlicitÉ Gauvrit remained one of the Lumineau household; a girl who had not the right to withdraw her betrothal promise, and who was not to be sought in marriage by any other while Mathurin was living. Some men even had a superstitious dread of her; they would have been afraid to set up housekeeping with a girl whose first love had met so unhappy a fate. All the advances she had made had come to nought. Soured and embittered, in her rage she had gone so far as to regret that the cripple had not been killed on the spot. Had the poor wretch, who was scarcely to be called living, died then and there, she would have recovered her liberty, the past would have been quickly forgotten; while now, it was kept in everyone's memory by the sight of the maimed man on crutches, hanging about the farmstead of which he should have been master. She had found that Death is sometimes long in claiming its victims. Then courage had returned; in her astuteness FÉlicitÉ had recognised that public opinion holding her as belonging to the Lumineau family, by them only could she realise her ambition: to go away from La SeuliÈre, escape the domination of her stepmother, and become the mistress of a large farm, with more means and freedom than ever she had possessed at home. Never having loved her former betrothed, actuated only by vanity, as is sometimes the case in country surroundings, she had said to herself:

"I will bide my time. I will make them long the more for me by not going to La FromentiÈre. One day Mathurin will come to me, or will call me to him. I am positive that he has not forgotten me. Stupid of him; but it will help my ends. Thanks to him, I shall see them all again; the old man who mistrusts me, the young men who will admire me for my beauty. And I shall marry either FranÇois or AndrÉ, and shall be the mistress of a farm as I ought to be, and of the richest farm in the whole parish."

Now FranÇois, whom she had tried to captivate, had gone away. But, on the other hand, Mathurin had come to her; at the cost of terrible fatigue and suffering he had dragged himself to Sallertaine to greet her publicly; while AndrÉ, before all the girls, had said: "It is an age since I saw you. You are not a bit altered."

FÉlicitÉ had gathered one of the yellow irises that grew so profusely on the Marais. Half laughing she thought over her recent triumph, the iris lightly held between her lips; her arms swinging as she walked caused the full sleeves to rustle against the moirÉ of her apron; her smiling gaze was directed to the distant meadows. She was thinking that AndrÉ would make a handsome husband, better looking than ever Mathurin had been; that, after all, he was one year younger than herself, that he had engaging manners, and had not been wanting in audacity either to have said: "You have not altered." And she went on to think: "The first opportunity that offers, I will invite them to a dance at home. I am sure that AndrÉ will come."

Slowly she walked along the raised path in the burning rays of the mid-day sun. Grasshoppers were chirping; every now and again the acrid scent of fading rushes was in the air. Wholly absorbed in her daydream, FÉlicitÉ Gauvrit did not perceive that she had nearly reached home. The white buildings of La SeuliÈre, standing out in the meadow, came as an unwelcome surprise. At the same moment a doubt crossed her mind, disturbing, unbidden ending to her dream. Suppose AndrÉ too were to go away? Or that Mathurin, elated as he was sure to be by the least sign of remembrance, and made thereby more eager, more jealous, were to guess what was in the wind?

FÉlicitÉ had stopped in the middle of the bridge that led from the path to the farm. The tall, supple young woman raised her arms above her head, scowled impatiently, and snapped the stem of the yellow iris, which fell prone into the dyke, then following it with her eyes for a second, she looked at her own reflection in the water, and smiled again. "I shall succeed," she said. And descending the slope of the bridge she reached La SeuliÈre by the cross road.